With part one of the movie of the iconic Latin American revolutionary currently doing the rounds in the quality cinemas, and part two out shortly, Liz Walker reviews Steven Soderbergh’s long awaited Che part 1.

Director Steven Soderbergh, who is perhaps better known for the Ocean’s Eleven movies and the remake of Solaris, has created a film in two parts (part two will be on release shortly) which was timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary in January of the revolutionary overthrow of the Cuban dictator Batista.

The film starts with a meeting between Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (played by Benicio del Toro) and Fidel Castro (Demian Bichir) in 1955 in Mexico City and follows the small invasion party as it gradually attracts more followers who establish a base in the Sierra Maestra in Cuba to wage a guerrilla war of liberation against the oppressive and corrupt Batista regime.

We are shown Che battling with his chronic asthma as he and his comrades slog their way through the Cuban hinterland fighting their way towards Havana in 1959. He instils discipline and order on the group not only in terms of survival and weapons skills, but also in encouraging all those who join to learn to read, saying that if you can’t read you can’t tell when you are being deceived. At one point he tells a weary comrade who has just come off watch and wants to lie down to get his maths book and study. This is obviously a not-so-veiled reference to the educational achievements of the Cuban revolution – moving from a situation where a majority of poor peasants and workers were illiterate to having significantly higher literacy rates than the revolution’s greatest enemy – the USA.

Interspersed with the scenes in Cuba which are shot in colour are flash forwards to Che’s time in the United States and his famous speech at the UN in 1964, which is grainy documentary style black and white. The monochrome episodes are very skilfully done and beautifully evoke a real feeling of time and place.

But for me the best decision Soderbergh made was to shoot the film mainly in Spanish using Spanish speaking actors (who are uniformly excellent), with subtitles for the English speaking audience, which engenders a real feeling of authenticity and closeness to the events. If he had copped out and gone for an English speaking movie with big name Holywood actors the movie would surely have been a disastrous mockery.

Towards the end of the film the revolutionaries are on their way to Havana. Che forbids the men to indulge in looting, and then a wonderful flashback to Mexico City in 1955 brings the film full circle, giving it a graceful and satisfying completeness, even though this is only part one.

This wonderful film is an amazing adventure story about trying to create a new society, and this is summed up for me by one small scene near the end when a reporter asks Che if he is happy the revolution is over.